The Big Show in Bololand

"Bert Patenaude has written a richly informative and unusually engaging book. In the history of a long-forgotten episode--the American famine relief effort in the new-born Soviet Union in 1921--he has found a template for understanding much of what transpired thereafter in the Soviet-American relationship. And he has done it with brio, marshalling a colorful cast of characters, Soviet as well as American--including especially Herbert Hoover who emerges in a fresh and intriguing light."--David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
"This book is to be warmly welcomed as the first full, and admirably presented, account of this major crisis in Soviet history--important, too, as an American experience. Here is not only the dramatic story of the American rescue operation, but also of the astonishing confrontations between the lifesavers and those who resented and sabotaged them."--Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror and The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine